But, every year there are different artists and a new look, so today is not as before. Go there for an almost once in a lifetime experience. I will be back with my images from my visit soon. Article from The Guardian. 😀 Pelle

Founded in 1989, the Icehotel in Swedish Lapland is built from the snow up each year, using ice from the local river. The rooms are designed by international artists and this year feature spacemen and an ice queen

Top image: The hotel has 35 suites, featuring ice carvings designed by 36 different artists from 17 countries. Queen of the North (created by Emilie Steele and Sebastian Dell’Uva) is one of the more intense rooms, with the bed surrounded by the head and hands of an icy goddess.

The top 10 photography exhibitions of 2017.

I picked this up in The Guardian. 😊 Pelle

About the top image: A still from Incoming by Richard Mosse. Photograph: Courtesy of the artist, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York and carlier|gebauer, Berlin.

Perhaps the most widely discussed exhibition of the year, Mosse’s vast three-screen video installation was not strictly photography, but addressed all the issues that the medium is freighted with as it negotiates the post-truth world. Shot on a hi-tech military surveillance camera that registers body heat from as far away as 30km, Incoming reimagined the contemporary refugee crisis as a Ballardian dystopian drama populated by spectral figures moving slowly through an alien landscape. Beautifully observed moments of heightened intimacy – a lone figure praying to Mecca amid the tumult around him – provide breathing space in an almost overwhelming audiovisual installation.

Something that I don´t often do. However, with my dear friend Knut, his brother Asle and their wonderful friends in Norway it all went well. We caught lots of fish. Fishing is very relaxing. Also taking care of the net after is contemplative. We had so much of everything and nothing to talk about. First time I managed to photograph fishing as well.

Swaps – Photographs from the David Hurn collections runs from 30 September 2017 to 11 March 2018 at the National Museum Cardiff

All you’ve got is a box with a hole at the front. That’s what we’ve all got and that’s all we’ve ever had since photography was invented.

“All that happens is the image of life out there goes whizzing through that lens and goes bang onto some material or other and you get a trace of that life on the back of the box. And you’ve got once chance at it, unlike painting or writing you can’t go back and edit, in photography the moment’s gone and will never happen again.

“So, all we have is this box with a hole in the front. So how come if there was a sheep dog trial for instance and Cartier-Bresson, McCullin and Bruce Davidson were there, they are all photographing exactly the same thing but if you showed me 10 pictures from that event I would be able to tell you who had taken what picture?

“It’s the signature of someone which can’t be contrived; it’s the purest thing to their real personality, the world seen through their eyes. The pictures are stamped with the unique style of the individual who shot them.

“But what is necessary for the authorship to come through is an impeccable command of the technical side. The best photographers might say ‘Oh, the technical side is unimportant’. Well, the technical side is staggeringly important but it has got to the point with them that they don’t have to think about it. That only comes through hard work and incessant practice.

“I always stress this point… you’re not a photographer because you are interested in photography.

“The picture is out there, you don’t make the picture, you just have a good visual eye and press the button at the right time. For that you must have an intense curiosity and tenacity, not just a passing visual interest, in the theme of the pictures. This curiosity leads to intense examination, reading, talking, research and many, many failed attempts.

“The idea that there’s no future in taking pictures is nonsensical. If you go to Smiths in Paddington station there’s 3,000 magazines for sale and they’ve all got pictures in them, they’re on websites.

“Everybody’s floundering a little bit as to how to make any money from it but those sorts of problems will be solved, clever people will find ways. Pictures are going to be needed there and the skills are still going to be the same.”

It is a measure of the force of the medium of photography that a picture that probably took a 60th of a second to shoot continues to fuel the life of another man 62 years on.

Some like to get their faces dirty. Like some jockeys. Yesterday was an evening on the dirt track, and though it was really dirty there was a very friendly and good atmosphere. Many of them realised the situation and my interest in their dirt covered faces. I think they really enjoyed it. However the evening races are tricky with the flood lights. I am looking forward to another day race soon.